John Boland

John Boland is Professor of Environmental Mathematics and Director of the Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics at UniSA.

Professor Boland began working at one of the precursor institutions of UniSA, Magill CAE, in 1985, in the School of Communication Studies. He then completed his PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Adelaide in 1996. His thesis topic was “Modelling Heat Flows in Domestic Dwellings.” In that year, he moved to the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Mawson Lakes Campus, where he is now.

Professor Boland is Program Leader for Low Carbon Precincts in the CRC for Low Carbon Living. He has, with colleagues, has held eleven nationally competitive grants, including eight ARC grants, plus three CRC industry grants. He has also coordinated a number of projects at the Mathematics in Industry Study Group workshops where companies pay a small fee and bring a problem for mathematicians to work on for a week.

Professor Boland has published 135 academic papers, approximately half of which are co-authored by various PhD students. He has sixteen PhD completions as either Principal or Co-supervisor and currently supervises eleven PhD students. His research covers a wide range of areas in what can be termed environmental mathematics, from water resource management to renewable energy utilisation to environmental accounting. One of the tools he and his team has constructed, the Boland-Ridley-Lauret diffuse radiation model (published in Renewable Energy), is used by the Bureau of Meteorology to construct gridded solar data for the whole of Australia, and thus is used for the evaluation of solar projects throughout the country. It is also used in the Meteonorm software for similar work throughout the world. His work on short term solar forecasting (published in Solar Energy) has resulted in his being part of the International Energy Agency Task 46 on solar forecasting, comprised of the foremost experts in the field. He is Director of Resource Assessment and Climate for the International Solar Energy Society, and past Editor for Energy Meteorology for Renewable Energy journal. He is a Fellow of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Boland has been a visiting professor in the last few years at Université de La Reunion, France, Universidad Pontifica de Santiago, Chile, Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, and has delivered invited presentations at those universities as well as ones in Germany, Italy, United States, China and Canada. He has been on scientific or organising committees of several conferences of the International Solar Energy Society, World Renewable Energy Network, The International Environmetrics Society, the Australia and New Zealand Applied Mathematics Society and the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand.